Roman Catholicism in Germany - The Present Situation of Catholicism in Germany

The Present Situation of Catholicism in Germany

According to data from 2009, only two of Germany's Bundesländer (federal divisions) have Catholic majorities: Bavaria in the southeast (55.1%) and Saarland in the west (63.4%) . Besides these Bundesländer, parts of Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg have significant Catholic populations.

The state supports both the Catholic and Protestant churches. The state collects taxes for the churches and there is religious education in the schools, taught by teachers who have to be approved by the churches. Church taxes are "automatic paycheck deductions" taken from all registered church members, "regardless of how often members attend services."

Catholicism in Germany today faces several challenges.

• Traditionally, there were localities with Catholic majorities and areas of Protestant majorities; however, the mobility of modern society began to mix the population. Interconfessional married couples face the problem of not being able to share the same communion. Also, because of continuing secularisation, most Bundesländer have become predominantly neither Catholic nor Protestant (in addition to the predominantly Catholic ones mentioned above, the only Protestant majority is found in the northern Schleswig-Holstein, 53.1%)

• Modern society is changing old structures. Exclusively Catholic environments are disintegrating, even in traditional areas like the Bundesländ Bavaria where the Catholic majority was lost in the capital city of Munich as recently as in 2010
• The number of Catholics who attend Sunday mass has decreased (from 22% in 1990 to 13% in 2009).

One of the biggest challenges facing the church is to retain the registered, tax-paying members (regardless of how often they attend services) to fund parishes and church agencies, especially its international relief organizations like Adveniat. German Roman Catholics, however, are divided over the issue of a compulsory Church tax. Under the tax an additional 8 percent to 9 percent of personal income tax is deducted at source by the state from registered churchgoers (of Catholic and Protestant communities). Although the tax provides the Catholic and Lutheran churches with an exact membership count and a net income of 5.6 billion euros (in 2008) which has helped make the German Roman Catholic Church one of the wealthiest in the world, it forces out or excommunicates Catholics who wish to retain membership but do not want to pay the tax. Many Catholics favour leaving the system intact because it pays the salaries of thousands of church employees and contributes to the work of aid agencies such as Caritas, among others. Other Catholics say members should not have to be forced out of the church or excommunicated simply because they don't want to pay the Church tax.